Since its 1989 debut, The Simpsons has been a leviathan in the entertainment ecosystem. With over 762 episodes over 35 seasons, the show holds the titles of the longest-running American animated series, the longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series. Over its runtime, it’s evolved to stay relevant and conform to, even shape, the cultural zeitgeist. Yet, while this long history has afforded it critical acclaim, financial returns, and a pedigree of which most other shows could only dream, it also means that it faces a dilemma—the ravages of time.
Obviously, this is not unique to The Simpsons. Every show, indeed, everything, marches according to entropy’s ever-playing drumbeat. However, The Simpsons’ animated nature places it in a curious and arguably unique position amongst its sitcom counterparts as its voice cast is getting older, but the characters are not. And, while this might not matter throughout a single season or two, when a show has been running for well over thirty years, the effects of age on its cast become noticeable as, while the characters may roughly look the same, they don’t sound the same.
Now, some of the voice changes of the years have been because voice actors have come and gone, as was the case with those voicing Dr. Hibbert. In other cases, while the original voice actors remained the same, the stress of continuing the voice as it was in the first few seasons was too much. This is most notable in how Homer’s voice shifted from its first season iteration. But, even accounting for this, there is no escaping the fact that all the characters now sound different from how they did during the show’s emergence and golden era (seasons one – ten), and not all changes are down to a conscious need to make voicing the character easier. Indeed, most of these changes are likely due to the changing voices of the actors.
For example, Julie Kavner has voiced Marge since the show’s debut as a cartoon short on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1989. Back then, Kavner was 37; now she’s 73, and expecting anyone, even an artist, to keep a consistent tone, cadence, and rhythm in their voice without any notable changes for that time is unreasonable. Aging has an impact. And this is not unique to Kavner. Indeed, many who joined the show right at its start are around or have passed retirement age; Harry Shearer, who voices multiple indispensable characters, is 80.
The question, then, is what can the show do about it? How can it maintain the characters’ in-world depictions while accommodating the real-world changes experienced by those voicing them? One answer, in theory, could be AI.
Now, we’re all familiar with deepfakes—digitally manipulated synthetic media created to misrepresent someone’s words or actions convincingly. While this is of particular concern at the moment, given the number of elections this year and the potential for the technology to be used to misinform voters, it also has less pernicious applications. The director of 2021’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain used AI to generate movie dialogue and voiceover. Specifically, he fed an algorithm multiple samples of the then-deceased Anthony Bourdain’s voice and then used the resulting synthetic representation to read emails the chef had written. Now, this is ethically contentious (as I’ve explained elsewhere), but if the film’s director is to be believed, his intentions were not to deceive but to tell a better story.
Like Roadrunner, something similar could be done in the Simpson’s case. An algorithm could be fed audio from every season of the show or select seasons if one has a particular outcome in mind, and that could then be used to create the audio for the characters. This output could be altered as needed for the scene’s context or quality control. This would enable those actors currently voicing the show’s characters to be freed from their commitments while also allowing the show’s colorful ensemble to remain looking and, importantly, sounding the same.
But while this might be appealing as it allows the characters’ iconic voices to remain static while new episodes could be produced, it would have a catastrophic impact on the show as a cultural artifact.
There are many reasons for this—some linked to a tarnishing of the show’s legacy as new episodes fail to capture the golden era’s brilliance, while others might be principally concerned with what such AI usage might signify for voice actors’ working conditions and employability in general—but I want to turn to the philosophy of death to gain some insights on what an end for the show, be that actual or simply possible, means.
Philosophers Bernard Williams and Viktor Frankl argue that death gives life meaning. Williams, via his Makropulos case, thought that an endless life would be tedious beyond comprehension and that this type of existence would be meaningless because it would be devoid of all the things that make a mortal human existence worth living. He claimed that in eternal existence, you would achieve all your goals and, eventually, be left with nothing new left to do, and without novelty, he thought, life would lose its definition and become a continuous living sludge. Likewise, in The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl argued that our limited time on this earth means we have a deadline by which we must achieve those things we want to do. If this time pressure were removed, then we would have all eternity in which to procrastinate, and we would, ultimately, never get anything done. This would mean that none of our goals would be achieved, and we would live without the joys of accomplishment. I think both apprehensions apply to an AI-enabled Simpsons.
As noted, the characters themselves do not age. Unlike the gang in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (who’ve made a point about incorporating aging into the show), all of the Simpson’s characters could look the same over time, and the show could continue indefinitely provided it kept getting renewed and kept finding people to write, animate, and importantly, voice the characters. To put it indelicately, they’re immortal. But having the characters in the show be so linked to those who voice them gives them an air of mortality. It would be hard to think of anyone or anything else voicing Homer than Dan Castellaneta, Lisa then Yeardley Smith, or Bart then Nancy Cartwright. But they can’t do the voices forever; eventually, they must stop. This inevitable endpoint, however close or distant it is, gives the show the potential for meaning it would otherwise lack if AI voiced the characters.
Using AI to recreate the actors’ voices ad infinitum would remove what little ‘mortality’ the show has, and, as Williams and Frankl feared for us, it would remove the benefits a finite existence brings. Gone would be the need to produce good episodes, replaced with the demand that episodes be good enough as the show’s producers would know they always had more time to even out the quality. New stories would be ever more difficult to come by, as the trope of ‘The Simpsons did it’ would apply ever more to The Simpsons itself. Indeed, this is something upon which the show has remarked, when, in season eight, they joke about how they’re not running out of ideas, with Troy McClure teasing that Marge will become a robot and Bart is one of a trio of triplets.
AI could be used to voice the characters of The Simpsons well off into the future, but would the show’s quality be diminished, even destroyed if we knew that there were forever new episodes in the pipeline? Might it not be better to let the series come to a natural, almost peaceful conclusion once the voice actors leave? Death for the show might be the kindest thing for those involved in its production and the fans. And when we’re talking about something that has been such an entertainment juggernaut for so long and has had some standout episodes with real impact (season eight’s ‘Homer’s Phobia’ was genuinely groundbreaking), one could argue it’s earned a dignified exit.
Either way, however, I know I’ll be singing the monorail song for so many years to come.
The Current Events Series of Public Philosophy of the APA Blog aims to share philosophical insights about current topics of today. If you would like to contribute to this series, email RichardBGibson@hotmail.com.
Richard B. Gibson is Editor of the Current Events in Philosophy and the Bioethics series. He is a bioethicist with research interests in human enhancement, emergent technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification.
